Now that Gamescom and PAX are over with, Rioters are starting to flood the forums again and I have for you a recap of the juicer posts this side of Runeterra!

Continue reading to peep posts contain information about what all Syndra can and can't throw with her W ability, SolCrushed possible post-rework Twitch changes and the status of slated changes to Viktor, Classick's thoughts on the Melee AD carry role, the upcoming Season Two Championship Riven icon, and a possible increase in the amount of available mastery pages.

Let's hop in!

Syndra's Force of Will has the ability to grab and throw enemy minions, jungle creeps, and much more!

With all the excitement around Syndra's PBE release, Summoners have taken to the forum to ask all sorts of questions about her and her kit. One of the most prominent is what Synda's W, Force of Will, can and can not throw. We've known since Gamescom that she can freely move around Red and Blue buff, but what else? Luckfor us, Meddler provided a pretty lengthy list.

"Add 'That isn't a clone' and this is pretty good as a general rule of thumb, can't immediately think of any cases it's not accurate for. Syndra's currently undergoing final balancing though so that could change of course if we find some champion specific interactions that are too strong a counter or run into other as yet unidentified issues.

To answer some of the specific examples raised:

Can be thrown:
- Yorick Ghouls
- Tibbers (though he'll continue to burn you so you'll want to throw him fast!)
- Shaco Jack in the Boxes (you'll still get feared though!)
- Malz Voidlings

An example of the quirky Lee Sin + Syndra interaction, taken from this video.

Solcrushed, one of the Live Game Designers, has taken to the forums to discuss the state of Twitch after his recent rework. He opened a thread for Twitch players and critics to discuss how they feel about Twitch and proposed some ideas he has floating around in his head. BE AWARE these aren't confirmed or slated changes, just a designer thinking aloud about the Plague Rat.

The post is very long, but I'll break it into the two most relevant parts, although I encourage you give the whole thing a read if you are interested in this stinky rat of a champion.

Here is his preface and ideology behind why Twitch needs some attention:

"Internal testing and metrics suggest that his balance is around where we think he should be. (I will also state again that I was ultimately in charge of 'balancing' him, so I MAY be biased).

However, this balance is almost entirely carried by his ultimate which is ungodly strong when used right. (It has my vote for best AD carry ult and the vote is not close, ECA is a distant second for me). This has resulted in each of his other skills feeling largely unsatisfying, which, coupled with the need to keep his early game weak (since he has such a great late game) has led to a champion that does not feel as fun as he should"

Secondly, here are the two major changes that Solcrushed is playing with:

"Spray and Pray: loses AD, gains AS that Ambush lost. Slight less cd late game"

As I said before, if you navigate to his thread you while find more detailed explanations behind these proposed changes and you will also be able to provide Solcrushed with your own input on the matter.

Speaking of Solcrushed, a while back he mentioned he was taking a look at Viktor and trying to get him into a good place by addressing his problematic Augments. He gave a small update to this today by addressing the claim that "if he is working on Twitch, he must be done with Viktor!". He says:

"Not really, Twitch is less a remake and more of a balancing thing. Viktor on the other hand not only needs an extensive overhaul from the scripting side but also on particles and whatnot."

He also followed up on this mentioning that Viktor's Augments are still his main focus.

"Currently I think the base skills are more or less fine. (They can be tweaked a bit)
The augments is where most of my work is going into atm."

Classick, another Game Designer at Riot, responded to an inquiry about possible changes to Master Yi by explaining why Melee AD carries, such as Fiora, Master Yi, or Tryndamere, have such a hard time finding a proper place in the game.

"So this is a very... complicated problem, melee DPS have generally had a rough experience in LoL since the very beginning. This problem is not exclusive to just Master Yi it's a problem with his archetype.

Some problems I've noticed with melee DPS:

- The prevalence of disengages + flash + walls in the game makes windows of engagement for melee champions incredibly small, and often too small for a melee dps to do an effective amount of damage to someone. If they do an effective amount of damage in such a short window they are just assassins, not melee DPS . This works better for fighters because they are much tankier so their window of engagement is a lot longer because they can afford to push forward and stay in fight. In addition to this towers are relatively close together so in areas like the bot lane it does not take much to get under the safety of a tower where melee DPS cannot attack, while ranged DPS can keep poking until they are under the tower.

- Exhaust shuts down melee DPS entirely, once a melee dps hard engages and gets hit by an exhaust they are sitting ducks.

- Melee DPS and Ranged DPS don't really have much of a difference as far as most statistics go, and late game they do relatively the same amount of damage.

- Melee DPS need effective tools that essentially "buy them time" to get out the damage they need to do to be useful in a team fight, a great example of this is Tryndamere.

There's some solutions we have thought about on how to fix the problem, but it's a VERY difficult issue. I think it will require a combination of changes that will slowly inch them closer to having a much better place in the game. The key here is finding ways to increase their engagement windows, and finding a way to differentiate them from Ranged DPS. Right now they are nearly identical except one is ranged, and one is melee meaning one has a very large advantage here :P."

Magus,
an eSports manager, talked a little bit about the upcoming Season Two
Championship Riven commemorative summoner icon. This icon was first
mentioned a week or so ago when Riot started to put up their finals
information and mentioned that it they "will be broadcasting a code
during the event that you can redeem to unlock this commemorative
summoner icon." This was confusing for some so he laid down a better
explanation, saying:

"Hey there - during the broadcast,
we'll be putting up a code so that anyone can claim the Riven summoner
icon! It will be available to anyone."

He also commented
that this icon code will not be following the "traditional client/store
path". This probably means Riot will have a special redemption page on
their webpage some where, but that is just speculation. Look for more
details closer October 13th when the finals are scheduled to be
conducted.

There you have it! If you are still hungry for more red posts, I encourage you to check out my previous recap of everything Hippalus, Riot's new eCommerce director, has been talking about. IP reductions, new bundle options, and so much more!

Sigh. They would lose money because you can just have one rune page and change it according to your game. Since you can't do that right now, that means you have to get more rune pages to compensate for different situations, which would either be buy rune pages for 6300ip or with rp. And not many people have the patience for 6300ip, so they would just buy with rp. That's how riot gets money and will lose money if you can change your runes at champion select.

Twitch is my main, and I have to agree that his HP is really bad. I also think that the problem lies with he poison flask; it just doesn't stack or slow enough to be worth it. His Ult is very powerful when IT IS USED RIGHT! ( I think that needs a little more emphasis...) If his ult is not lined up, or if the team fight isn't exactly stationary, it's basically useless. Anyway, I would love to see the changes he suggested to the stealth because it would really help his E (expunge), which they just buffed (almost doubling) the damage of last patch.

I agree expunge needs more dmg. But the real problem with twitch is he lacks mobility in team fights. I constantly have to go flash and ghost just avoid the first 6seconds of automatic death in a team fight. Any fighter like irelia wukong garen udyr hecarim riven etc that can travel to you almost instantly, automatically shuts down twitch im not saying instant death but to afford to survive i have flash q and ghost which by the time im back in the fight either my team is dead or everyone is to spread out to effectively use my ult.

His ult is quite ridiculous late game; to the point where if left alone, can potentially kill an entire team. Twitch has a presence threat where as you have champions such as Sejuani who's only a threat before she engages rather than after.

Becoming ignore-able as a tank is pretty bad and hopefully Riot picks up on it soon.

Really? I have a friend who uses Sejuani as a jungle and he wrecks 80% of the time (personal estimate). he was once called "tank from hell". So i don't think it's a problem with the character that you are having. I think they should look at balance issues with some of the older AP casters. They just don't stand up to the new characters and it's dissapointing when I'm forced to abandon a character because they can't compare.

About the Shaco/LeBlanc/Wukong/etc clones: I think the gamescript considers those to be champions, so I am not sure the interaction happens. I'll probably hit up the PBE later with a few friends to try, though I will probably forget to post results.

Exactly, I don't know if it is possible, but it should be not. The same with Smite, even though technically Shaco/LB clones are not champions, thus should be vulnerable to Smite, they are not... You can't just choose randomly one of the Shacos and pray that you picked the image, game will notify you that the target is wrong. Same here, they are considered as champions when it comes to targeting and interaction.

Changes to Melee carries will be intrresting, in dota melee carries scale significantly higher than ranged carries and their stats per level put other roles to shame. I dont think league is designed to handle such ludicrous late game power so theyll have to find their own way to make then work.

I actually agree. Either nerf Exhaust or remove it. I am sick and tired of having to grab exhaust on every character just because it renders every character useless for a good 2-3 seconds. In fast paced games like League 2.5 seconds (exact time) is long for someone to be utterly useless. I'd replace Exhaust with a skill that reduces Armor and Mres for a short duration (by a percentile). It would remove the issue with the 5 tanky meta and remove the 5 Exhaust teamfight victories that I have seen countless times.

Xin Zhao is the only Melee DPS whose damage is MUCH higher than Ranged DPS, he has his issues with exhausts etc. but if you buy IE on him, your damage SKYROCKETS due to the scaling on your Q. That combined with innate tankiness from your ultimate, great steroid from W, awesome sticking to the target with your E and building a bit of tankiness you will become a monster that will destroy the enemy carry in E - R - 1-2 autoattacks combo.